


Cold upon the mountain

by Ilrona



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, And the evil dark fortress in the frozen mountains, High Priest of the God of Darkness with human sacrifices, Is I guess something like Icecrown Citadel in WoW, Kylo Ren here is a bit like Sauron in Numenor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 17:12:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7396339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilrona/pseuds/Ilrona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren, High Priest of the God of Darkness, is given a vision of the fall of their greatest fortress in the north, Starkiller. He’s also on a quest to find the legendary sword forged by his grandfather, while Warlord Hux, the leader of the victorious campaign against the Hosnian Alliance, is trying to figure out the strategies of their enemies, the Queen of Alderaan and her allies.</p><p>In the end, as foretold, the fortress falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold upon the mountain

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the lyrics of ‘I Followed Fires’ by Matthew and the Atlas.

The blizzard throws itself against the cast iron windows with all the might of a battering ram, the world outside swallowed by white. Nothing can be seen: the courtyard, the watchtowers, the temple, the mountains surrounding the fortress like a protective embrace are all buried under the furious snow.

Inside, a great fire is crackling in the black hearth, hungrily gnawing at the wood. It makes the room warm and bright. Inside, Hux is just finished with his latest letter – perhaps demanding more ore from the mines of Lothal, or maybe more children to forge into soldiers from one of the recently conquered villages on the southern border. Kylo watches as Hux presses the signet ring into yielding blood-red wax.

“Come here, Warlord,” Kylo says, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Hux comes, though not before making sure the ink bottle won’t topple off the edge of the table. Out of his ceremonial armor he doesn’t look like one of the great, haughty statues of legendary heroes come to life. Though he’s still as tall as ever, and stands straight and proud and firm as the pillars that hold the sky, he looks lesser and more pleasing now, his embroidered tunic not hiding the smallness of his shoulders.

Kylo wants to push Hux down onto the bed, rub his face against Hux’s neat beard, take his eager cock into his hands and kiss it until his come falls into Kylo’s mouth. Before, he would take off all his rings, slowly, one after the other, just so he could watch Hux pant wordlessly on the dark furs, so desperate already for him but too proud yet to beg.

“You look exhausted,” Hux says as he pulls the tunic off. Kylo grabs his little waist, something in him melting like wax thrown into the fire at how right his big, sword-calloused hands look on that pale, smooth skin. Many rings glint on Kylo’s rough, cruel fingers: some with precious stones and pearls and some plain; some gold and some iron, depending on whether they are rings of divine worship or glorious war – although the two are, in a way, inseparable. No war can be successfully waged without the divine assistance of the Supreme God, after all. “Has our eternal god been gifting you with visions again?”

Kylo buries his face into Hux’s stomach, his hands tightening. “The fortress will fall,” Kylo mumbles against warm skin, half-hoping Hux won’t hear him.

He does. Kylo can feel his body stiffen, as if frozen into a statue of ice by the blizzard raging outside, like Overseer Phasma always warns the young soldiers will happen to them if they leave the protective walls of the fortress. But at least Hux’s skin under his cheek remains warm and alive.

“Is this what the Supreme God told you?” Hux asks. His voice sounds like he’s trying to remain stoic, but some shock and hurt seep into it nevertheless, like drops of blood falling onto the white fabric of the ceremonial robes of the sacrifices.

“He showed me a vision. Of soldiers wearing the wretched tabards of the Kingdom of Alderaan and the fourth province of Yavin fighting with our own soldiers in the courtyard. Our red banners burning. I saw myself lying in the forest outside the walls, dying. You saved me.”

“Why would I bother with you, already defeated and dying, when the enemy is in our fortress? Or are we so overwhelmed that our only choice is to flee?” Hux sounds both afraid and angry. Kylo is glad he doesn’t have to look at his face now. “Why would the Supreme God want the fortress to be lost?”

“I don’t know,” Kylo admits bitterly.

He’s the High Priest of the Supreme God, the one chosen as the vessel of the God of Darkness. The Darkness which the heathen fools of the enemy nations are afraid of. They don’t understand that Darkness is not the absence of Light, but rather something which already had existed long before the first spark of Light ever began to taint it. The world was born in Darkness, and in the end, once the final source of Light will be extinguished, the world will be under the dominion of the Darkness once again.

Yet even to his High Priest Snoke doesn’t reveal everything –  _There are some things, Kylo Ren, that mortals would not be able to withstand, not even you. You would die if I showed you all you wish to know._

“But Starkiller can't fall! The walls are fifty feet thick and five hundred feet high: no battering ram or catapult could break these walls, and no ladder would be high enough. Do they have some secret weapon we don’t know about? Is there no way to prevent it?”

“I don’t know,” Kylo repeats, frustrated, hating that there’s nothing he can say to the Warlord that would make him feel anything but an incompetent fool. He pulls his face away from Hux’s stomach, his hands falling from his waist.

“Of course you don’t!” Hux spits out. Now that Kylo is no longer touching him he turns around and walks to the window, staring out into the blizzard, his back to Kylo. “You don’t understand true warfare! I don’t know why I was expecting any help from you. You’re only a priest and an executioner, after all.”

Outrage flares into life in Kylo. His fingers grab the fur on the bed, trying to calm himself enough to not grab instead the codices and throw them out of the window (it would make Hux so mad, and Mitaka, the head librarian, would probably burst into tears once he heard about it), or throw the map of their realm into the flames, which are still merrily dancing in the hearth, unaware both of the snow raging outside and the two men raging inside.

“ _I_ don’t understand true warfare? Your weak arms wouldn’t be able to lift  _my_  broadsword! All you did during the Hosnian Alliance campaign was figuring out which city to attack next and which villages to steal the cattle from to feed the army, and then you stood on a hill watching your soldiers kill and die on the battlefield. Then you walked into the ruins of the capital city and ordered the rulers to be captured and executed. You didn't even kill them yourself! You’re a strategist, not a warrior!”

Kylo remembers the day of the sacrifice before the campaign. Sunlight shining on endless rows of white breastplates and helmets, red banners held high in white, gauntleted hands. The sun at its zenith, looking down at the army with wary curiosity. The sacrificial knife in his jeweled hand, so small, so light compared to his broadsword. The lolling heads and the desperate words pleading for mercy cut off by the knife sinking into vulnerable throats. Later, the stomach-turning stench of bitter smoke and burning human flesh in his nostrils. He turned around to look down from the altar, and there was Hux standing in front of the great army, his face not hidden behind neither helmet nor priestly veil. Now Kylo doesn’t remember the exact expression on his face, but he thinks it looked beautiful and frightening at the same time.

Snoke accepted the sacrifice. The campaign was an absolute victory. The five defeated nations of the Hosnian Alliance became vassal states of the realm.

Later Kylo learned that the mourning people of the Hosnian Alliance had begun to call Hux the Sunswallower in fearful, hateful tones. They had an old, popular legend about a great monster that will swallow the sun at the end of the world. The campaign was so horrible, so many people dead, so many cities burned to the ground, that it felt to them like the end of the world.

Which was – impressive, Kylo has to admit.

“I know we will survive,” Kylo promises. That, at least, he can say with certainty. “Both of us. I saw it in the vision. We will flee, and continue fighting. The war won’t be lost, just the fortress.”  _Or_ , Kylo thinks,  _I didn’t have any visions about the end of the war_.

* * *

The wooden shacks are ash now, the charred corpses of the villagers haphazardly gathered into a stinking pile at the edge of the village. The dry air of the desert seems to tremble above the heap, as if even it is terrified of the ones responsible for the brutal bloodshed at Tuanul.

The one house not yet burned to the ground is filled with worthless artefacts from all over the world. There’s an Arkanisian fishing net, a dirty, threadbare rug from Tatooine, a carved statue of a protective spirit from Kashyyyk, a handful of coins resting in a fractured clay bowl. Kylo stares at the necklace lying on a closed codex.

He remembers this necklace – pale pearls, bright purple stones, silver-white chain.

He remembers the sun shining above the greatest harbor in Corellia, the salty breeze playing with the sails of a hundred different ships painted a hundred different colors – not like their armada now, with its red and black sails –, Han Solo shouting from the mast of the Millennium Falcon in delight. Lor San Tekka kneeling in front of the young queen of Alderaan with the little crown prince sitting in her arms, watching curiously as the brave adventurer stood up and showed the necklace to Queen Leia, words of praise and reverence falling from his lips.

The brave adventurer – the poor pathetic old man – lies at the bottom of the heap of dead bodies now. Kylo’s broadsword ended his life with one blow: one less supporter of the Kingdom of Alderaan, one less worshipper of false deities.

Kylo looks through everything in the old house, breaking a closed lockbox and finding nothing but mud and a few seeds in it – what ridiculous ritual could that be needed for? –, even looking under the bed.

The sword is not here.

He tears the rug to pieces with his sword and throws the clay bowl against the wall in his useless rage, watching with trembling lips as pieces of clay and coins fall onto the floor.

“Burn this down as well,” Kylo orders after leaving Lor San Tekka’s home, squinting in the sunlight, so harsh and bright after the darkness of the house.

“Yes, High Priest,” Overseer Phasma says, grabbing a torch before ordering the soldiers to join her. The bright red plume stands motionless on her shining helmet; there’s not even an echo of a breeze now in this desert.

Later, on their way back home, huddled together around the campfire, the soldiers eat in silence, their visors for once not hiding their face. Kylo sits not with them, but at the edge of the camp on his horse, absent-mindedly playing with the braids in Upsilon’s beautiful black mane. Suddenly the horse snorts roughly, an almost nervous sound, hooves throwing dirt into the air. One of the soldiers appears, arms full of twigs for the fire. He doesn’t dare to look at Kylo, but Kylo does look at him, and sees that his eyes are wet, his dark face shining with tears.

* * *

Starkiller, the magnificent fortress, the black heart of their realm, is a place of glory and power. Everything is built from a stone the color of the starless night sky, a stone which has no beauty but can withhold the onslaught of any army. The pale, weak sunlight of the afternoon is caught on the red and black tiles of the dome of the temple of the Supreme God, the tall, strong watchtowers cast shadows onto the barracks and the training fields. The harsh winds grab the blood-red banners. Knife-sized icicles hang from the main gate; Kylo glances up at the grinning skulls and swords carved into the stone above his head. One of the few ornaments of the fortress.

As Kylo rides through the huge courtyard, he glances at two young soldiers practicing, one child raising their wooden sword to protect their face from the clumsy swing of the other kid. Three other figures huddle together against the cold at the foot of the statue of Warlord Tarkin.

The air is so cold that Kylo can see the little white clouds of every breath that falls from Warlord Hux’s lips. Wearing the black fur of some beast, his body seems bigger than it actually is. The cruel, frozen winds paint his cheeks a harsh red, making him seem vulnerable. Only his eyes, pale and cunning and brutal, betray his true nature. Eyes which can look at the map of the world and see only nations to conquer, not caring about the people that have to be slaughtered and the homes that have to be razed to the ground if that is the price of their victory.

“Do you have the sword?” Hux asks as Kylo leads Upsilon towards the stable, Hux following him – no, not following. Very carefully walking swift enough that he doesn’t get left even one step behind.

“Not yet,” Kylo scowls, his expression safely hidden behind his veil. “I will continue the quest.”

“You know our blacksmiths can forge the best weapons in the world. If you’re getting bored of that monstrous broadsword of yours with the fractured crossguards, you can have a new one.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about. My grandfather once traveled to a sacred cave in the frozen wasteland of Ilum and there forged the legendary sword which is my inheritance. I don’t doubt the skills of our blacksmiths, but they can't make a sword like that.”

Hux asks for a few dark blue berries from Thanisson, the stable boy, and puts his hand under Upsilon’s mouth, opening his fist. Kylo half-hopes Upsilon will bite the hand of the irreverent bastard off –  _our blacksmiths can forge you a sword_ , as if any of them could even dream to come close to his grandfather! –, but the horse eats only the berries, the pale hand remains unscathed, though liberally coated in saliva.

“Careful, High Priest,” Hux warns after gently patting Upsilon’s head in goodbye. Turning to Kylo, the hard pale eyes somehow find his own eyes even behind the dark veil. “Don’t let this quest to find the mysterious sword of a dead ancestors draw your attention away from expanding and protecting our realm.”

* * *

In front of the door of the war room, so deep in the bowels of the fortress that the sunlight can’t find a way in and everything is illuminated by the blue lights of the braziers, stand two guards. The visors of their helmet are lowered so Kylo can’t see their faces, but he can feel their eyes on him, afraid. He ignores them, grabs the heavy handles and opens the door, lowering his head so he doesn’t hit it in the doorframe as he steps inside.

The war room is dominated by the huge table with the map of the world, surrounded by heavy stone chairs. Warlord Hux stops speaking only very briefly as Kylo sits down the nearest empty chair next to Unamo, the chief cartographer, and adjusts his broadsword so it doesn’t dig into his leg uncomfortably.

“…so even though Arkanis has the biggest fleet of our realm, their army isn’t significant. If enough of the enemy’s ships survive both the battles with our fleet and the very likely storms near the cost and they reach the land they’ll quickly fight their way through the country, unfortunately. If they go east, Arkanis’s neighborhood there is Dagobah, which is very sparsely populated. The whole country is one huge swamp. The enemy can travel across Dagobah with very little fight; we have only a few outposts there. However, it’s impossible to travel through the Mustafar Mountains with an army; nothing living can survive those volcanoes. So they’d have to turn north once they reach the foot of the mountains… “

Kylo tries to smother a yawn as his attention drifts away from Hux’s endless waterfall of words. Where could grandfather’s sword be hiding? Naboo, perhaps, with its green hills, golden cities and rainbow-clothed great queens? Grandfather was the consort of one of those queens, after all: the sword could have found its way back to that kingdom somehow?

Or perhaps it was stolen by a band of pirates and is now on a ship fighting the waves of the great sea. Which seafaring nation will it reach then? Grey, rainy Arkanis, loyal nation of the realm? Or the enemy Corellia with its turquoise coasts and the biggest shipyards of the world? Or will they sail south and set foot on the coast of Dagobah with its swamps filled with mysterious sprites who will teach you foul magic?

“Queen Leia would try to convince them to join their army, or at least to aid them in some way.” Kylo flinches at the name and begins listening again. “I have to admit that I don’t know whether the nations of the Hosnian Alliance would be foolish enough to rebel against us. During my campaign I tried to show them our ruthlessness – so that they will fear us so much that they will not try to fight our rule off, and allow us to rule in peace and not throw our realm into disorder. Yet it’s possible that they…”

Kylo’s attention drifts away again. He has to get the sword. Maybe he should travel to the great faire in Takodana? But how could the legendary weapon be in that silly place, where only insignificant peasants and ragtag adventurers go to throw their few coins away?

He remembers visiting with his parents, feeling overwhelmed by the million different sounds – oinking pigs and laughing squires, little bells chiming and fragments of some harvest song in a language he couldn’t understand. Someone made the little prince sit on a little pony. His father, the famous pirate, looked more at ease there among the dirty travelling merchants and jugglers than in the royal banquets. He was smiling, and so was Queen Leia, for once wearing a crown made not from gold and diamonds but from flowers, her long hair, out of the elaborate hairdo, flowing like a banner in the gentle breeze. A little peasant girl with dirty feet climbed onto Chewie’s shoulders. The little prince was laughing, too, grabbing the reins of the little pony with a delighted smile–

No. Kylo won’t waste his time traveling to Takodana. The sword must be somewhere else.

* * *

Months later, the fortress is lost.

Kylo can see hardly see anything. The sky is black: no moon, no stars. There are bright fires in the distance, though. He was able, though with not an insignificant amount of difficulty, to crawl under the nearest tree, resting against the trunk. He can hear the sounds of blades clashing against each other, blades meeting shields, screams of pain, screams of victory, screams of dying.

He saw the sword, but he did not find it. The sword shining with ethereal blue light in the hand of some adventurer girl, and, before that, the young soldier who cried while gathering wood after the massacre of Tuanul. He had betrayed the realm, revealed to their enemies the secret entrance of the catacombs, and a small group walked right into the fortress and opened the great gate from the inside, the soldiers like a swarm of locust pouring into the fortress. It didn’t matter, after that, how thick and how high the walls were.

Kylo met his father on the southern bridge. He killed him. Even in the darkness he could see that there was so much blood. The body fell down the bridge – Kylo pushed it, maybe, he can’t remember now – onto the frozen river, and the ice broke, and the body was swallowed by the dark water under the ice.

He can see, now, a dark figure quickly rushing towards him, and it takes him only a moment to realize it's Upsilon, and then another moment to realize it’s Hux riding his horse, a torch in one hand. Hux jumps down, the snow crunching under his boots as he quickly walks to him, kneeling down. There’s blood on his face, on the tip of his nose, on his beard, on his armor – it’s not the ceremonial armor but simple, light chainmail. Kylo smiles faintly. The vision was right. Or course it was. Hux is here.

Hux brings the torch closer so the warm light falls onto Kylo’s body, revealing all the blood. Some of it is his father’s, most of it is his own.

After several tries, they both manage to get onto Upsilon’s back. Kylo, panting, clings to Hux. He leans against his back, the blood from the wound made by Chewie’s crossbow likely soaking into Hux’s clothes.

“Your sword,” Hux says suddenly.

“We don’t have enough time to find it.” The wound in his shoulder hurts as if it was burning. He would not be able to lift the sword now. Hux would not be able to lift it ever. And there’s so much blood on it, anyway. His father’s blood. “Our blacksmiths will make another. Even better, just as you said.”

Hux makes a strangled sound that sounds like it would be an amused laugh if the fortress wasn’t filled with the enemy.

“Take me where the light dies,” Kylo grits out.

“Where is that?” Hux asks, his words almost completely drowned out by the sudden loud crash. Maybe Warlord Tarkin’s statue fell onto the ground. Of course. Kylo can imagine the Queen of Alderaan, standing there, victorious, watching the statue of the loathed Warlord, the Butcher of Alderaan, lying on the ground. Not knowing yet that the day of this glorious victory is also the last day of her consort.

“The west. That is where the sun sets. Where the light dies. Snoke has a shrine in the western hills. We will reach it before dawn if we don’t stop.”

Kylo rests his wounded face on Hux’s shoulder, fatigued.

“I’m sorry about the fortress,” Kylo whispers weakly.

“We will take it back,” Hux vows, a promise as dark as the night they are riding through. “We will gather our army and take it back even if we have to slaughter everyone in our way.”

Kylo thinks about what they are leaving behind now. The blood-soaked altar in the middle of the great temple will be desecrated by the heathens. What will happen to their room on the top of the tower: to the codices, the furs, the hearth? Will the cursed knights of the Order of the Red Starbird feast in the great hall now? Will enemy soldiers sleep in the barracks, practice in the courtyard?

He hopes, viciously, that they will leave. That it will be too cold for the soldiers used to the temperate climate of Alderaan, the jungles of the fourth province of Yavin, the gentle sun-warmed coasts of Corellia. That they will feel miserable there, held in the painful grasp of the freezing cold, no matter how close they try to get to the fire.

He barely sees the trees around them in the dark, but he knows they are there. The forest where he used to wander with Hux sometimes, just the two of them. Watching together the last throes of some small critter caught in one of the traps. Snowflakes getting caught in red hair, Kylo’s veil getting caught by a rime-covered branch, both of them struggling to free it without tearing the fine dark veil. Starkiller was not as beautiful, not as sweet and kind as the royal palaces in the Kingdoms of Alderaan and Naboo, but it was the greatest stronghold of the north, perhaps the whole realm, the whole world.

Kylo lets his eyes fall closed, feeling weak and nauseous from losing so many things at once – his blood, his father, the fight against a ragged adventurer and one of their own soldiers, his grandfather’s sword, their fortress. The air is cold, but Hux’s body feels almost as warm as the fire dancing in their hearth used to feel.

Yes, Kylo thinks. They will take the fortress back.

**Author's Note:**

> The size of the fortress wall in the fic is based on the temple of Melkor in Numenor, described in The Silmarillion: “there the walls were fifty feet in thickness […] and the walls rose from the ground five hundred feet…” This is probably a pretty obscure reference, but I thought it would be fun. I also have no idea how big fantasy buildings are, actually.


End file.
